I’ll be right out, Fernanda yells from her room, and Julio and I wait for her in the living room, which is crammed with boxes that haven’t been unpacked. From the previous house, she brought a loveseat and the armchair that had been in Libardo’s study. There’s also a TV, a telephone, and the laptop she uses to talk to me, and a jumble of things that seem not to have found their places. Right next to that is a small dining set. We hear clacking footsteps, and Julio and I look at each other. Fernanda appears in a tight-fitting blue dress and high heels.
“Where is he?” she asks, surprised. “You didn’t leave him at your grandmother’s place.”
“He’s in the car,” Julio replies.
“Oh, O.K.,” Fernanda says, and sits down next to me on the sofa. “What are you going to do with him?”
“We’ve got to find something for him,” Julio says. “He’s in a bag at the moment.”
Fernanda takes a deep breath, as if trying not to cry. She’s wearing makeup—she’s got eyeliner on, and she fans her eyes with her hand.
“And how is he?” she asks hesitantly. “Did you see him?”
“Yes,” I say.
“He’s not all there,” Julio says.
“Jesus,” Fernanda says, unable to contain her tears.
“If it makes you feel better, there were no signs of violence on what they gave us,” Julio says.
“Don’t tell me any more,” Fernanda pleads. She dabs her eyes and checks her fingers to see if they’re smeared with mascara. She says, “I haven’t been able to arrange the mass yet. Father Diego isn’t answering me, but I already left him a message.”
“I’m leaving tonight,” Julio says.
Fernanda raises her voice: “You’re not going anywhere till we give him the sendoff he deserves.”
“Dad didn’t go to mass,” Julio objects.
“But he was a devout believer,” Fernanda says.
“In whom?” Julio asks. “Or what? The only thing he believed in was money.”
“Stop it,” I say.
They fall silent like chastised children. Fernanda gets up, rummages in a cardboard box, and pulls out a pack of cigarettes.
“Have you had breakfast?” she asks us.
We nod. She says she’s going to make coffee anyway and clacks off to the kitchen. Julio says in a low voice, she’s been in this apartment four years and she’s still got all these taped-up boxes. What’s in them?, I ask. Her things, he says, house stuff. Does she need help?, I ask. She’s got help, Julio says, there’s a lady who comes in three times a week and I’ve offered too. Plus, he adds, she’s in got more boxes out at the farm. Maybe now that I’m here . . . , I say. Fernanda is humming a song in the kitchen, a romantic song from the eighties. What does she do all day?, I ask Julio. Huh, he says, and shrugs. All I know is she’s always asking me for money, he adds. And do you give it to her? As much as I can, he says, I give her a set amount each month, but she claims it’s not enough.
“Are you talking about me?” Fernanda asks.
We don’t hear her footsteps; she appears there like a cat.
“I was telling Julio that while I’m here I can help you unpack these boxes.”
“Thank you, sweetheart,” she says, “the problem isn’t unpacking them but where to put what’s in them. Did you see how small the closets are? The kitchen doesn’t even have a pantry.”
“So why don’t you sell all this?” Julio asks. “Why keep it?”
“Darling, there are things in there it’s impossible to get anymore,” Fernanda says, and then asks, “Who wants coffee?”
She doesn’t even wait for a response. She spins around and leaves, like when she used to parade down the catwalks, Miss Medellín 1973.
All these years, all this time, and yet everything’s exactly the same. Or worse. An aging beauty queen, a brother who’s hiding out on a farm that he’s made his little fiefdom, a city that’s repeating its own history, a non-viable country that’s marching backward, and a world full of hate and war. A dead father who refuses to die, a dumbass who falls in love with a stranger on a plane. It all makes me want to throw up, to just stop existing.
But it smells like coffee, and the aroma brings me back. When it comes down to it, London isn’t so bad. I used to have Maggie, and I’ve still got a job waiting for me. A small apartment in a nice neighborhood—the bus passes nearby, the market isn’t too far away, I can walk to Finsbury Park, and on Sunday afternoons I can walk a little farther to see movies at the Everyman in Hampstead. I can fall in love again with an English girl, a Russian, an Indian, or a Serb. If Maggie loved me, somebody else can too. What I need now is to get some sleep. Fernanda can keep drinking her coffee and plan the mass, Julio can refuse and leave, or he can stay and we can sleep side by side the way we sometimes did as kids, Medellín can rot, Colombia can end up being devoured by hate, the world can explode. Fernanda is laughing loudly, alone in the kitchen. Alone? I’m going to sleep; I’ve been awake for more hours than anybody can endure.
“Shall we head out?” Julio asks me.
“Where to?”
“To find something for Dad.”
“Where are we supposed to go for that? What are you looking for?”
Julio shrugs. Fernanda laughs again, and he can’t take it anymore and stands up.
“Let’s get out of here.”
I go to the kitchen to say goodbye to Fernanda and find her with her back to me, talking on the phone. She’s scratching one calf with the tip of her foot. You’re crazy, she tells somebody. She laughs and says again, crazy.
“Ma.”
She turns around, looks at me, opens a cupboard, and takes out three mugs. Larry’s here, she tells the person she’s talking to, I’ve got to go.
“It’s just now finished,” she tells me, meaning the coffee. That aroma.
“What are we going to do with Dad?” I ask. She pours the coffee. “I’m not having any,” I say. “I’m going to lie down a little.”
“What about Julio?”
“He’s going out. What do you think we should put Dad in?”
“We’ve got to give Libardo a Christian burial.”
“You want to bury him?”
For a moment I consider pointing out that Libardo was buried for twelve years.
“Nobody gets buried in those circumstances,” I tell her. “They get dug up and taken somewhere else. To an ossuary or something, I don’t know, anywhere.”
“But he didn’t have a Christian burial,” she moans, and I start to get irritated with how she keeps saying “Christian burial,” as if she were a priest.
“The most practical thing is to cremate him,” I say.
“Most practical? Are you talking about your father?” she asks me indignantly, then yells, “Julio! Are you having coffee?” Julio walks in and Fernanda says, “Your brother tells me the most practical thing is to cremate Libardo.”
“Ma,” I try to interject.
“Makes no difference to me,” Julio says. “But we’ll have to wait if we want to cremate him because we need a document from the attorney general’s office.”
Fernanda holds out a cup of coffee but Julio refuses it. She offers it to me, and I say no. But that aroma. I take the cup and lift it to my nose.
“Libardo hasn’t been able to rest properly,” Fernanda says. “He deserves for us to give him a Christian burial.”
“Stop saying that, please,” I say.
“Stop saying what?”
“Just say we have to bury him, full stop.”
“But weren’t you just saying we should cremate him?”
This aroma that perfumes my exhaustion. This sleepiness that’s got me so I can barely stand. A mother who calls somebody crazy and laughs. The attorney general’s office that won’t let us cremate Libardo yet. An exasperated brother. A sip of coffee that warms my mouth, that cajoles my tongue and scrambles my neurons. The scorched smell of fireworks coming in through the window, the mountains like a backdrop. If I could die right now, I would.
“They can decide that afterward,” Julio tells us. “I’m going to buy him something before I take off. You coming?” he asks.
I’m only halfway through my coffee. I haven’t yet regained the strength to stand up. There are still a few people out there with the energy to keep setting off fireworks.
Julio looks at Fernanda, and she says firmly, “I can’t, I’ve got an appointment.”
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“I’ve got a lunch.”
Who’s the makeup and high heels for? Who makes her laugh? Why is she still worshiping Libardo?
“And I’m going to go to Father Diego’s church,” she says.
“You coming, Little Bro?” Julio asks.
If I lie down, I don’t know if I’ll see him again. He’ll go to his farm, and I don’t know if I’ll go visit him. If I want to spend a little more time with my brother, I have no choice but to go with him.
“Let me finish my coffee,” I say.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” Fernanda says.
“I’ll wait downstairs,” Julio says.
I sit alone with this aroma and this flavor that remind me of what I never should have been: a human being. And the mountains outside confirm to me the place where I never should have been born. I breathe in the sulfurous air of the city I never should have returned to. I think about the father who, for dignity’s sake, should never have had children, and about a country that should be wiped off the map. A failed species on the earth. A drowsiness. A fatigue.
I toss back the rest of the coffee, leaving the grounds in which fortune-tellers read the future. For the moment, mine will be to look for a container for Libardo’s bones.
I put the mug in the sink next to other dirty dishes. Fernanda has left her cell phone on the counter. This curiosity that killed more than the cat. I pick it up to look at the record of the last call. “Pedro,” it says.
This confusion, this spasm.